A panoply of dictators

The Trump administration is revoking the visas of some Saudi officials implicated in the death of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who lived in the U.S., Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced at an Oct. 23 State Department news conference.

But Trump has been reluctant to confront Saudi Arabia over the killing of Khashoggi. For weeks, he and other White House officials reminded critics that Saudi Arabia buys billions of dollars in weapons from the U.S. and is a crucial partner in the American pressure campaign on Iran.

Their defense highlights why the U.S. has for decades maintained close ties with some of the world’s worst human rights abusers.

Ever since the country emerged from the Cold War as the world’s dominant military and economic power, consecutive American presidents have seen financial and geopolitical benefit in overlooking the bad deeds of brutal regimes.

Changing allegiances in the Middle East

Before the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran was a close U.S. ally. Shah Reza Pahlavi ruled harshly, using his secret police to torture and murder political dissidents.

But the shah was also a secular, anti-communist leader in a Muslim-dominated region. President Nixon hoped that Iran would be the “Western policeman in the Persian Gulf.”

Nixon hosted Iranian Shah Reza Pavlavi at the White House in 1969.AP Photo

After the Shah’s overthrow, the Reagan administration in the 1980s became friendly with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The U.S. supported him with intelligence during Iraq’s war with Iran and looked the other way at his use of chemical weapons.

And before Syria’s intense, bloody civil war – which has killed an estimated 400,000 people and featured grisly chemical weapon attacks by the government – its authoritarian regime enjoyed relatively friendly relations with the U.S.

Syria has been on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979. But presidents Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton all visited President Bashar al-Assad’s father, who ruled from 1971 until his death in 2000.

Why Saudi Arabia matters

The alleged assassination of Khashoggi by Saudi operatives may seem surprising because of the 31-year-old crown prince’s reputation as a moderate reformer.

Salman has made newsworthy changes in the conservative Arab kingdom, allowing women to drive, combating corruption and curtailing some powers of the religious police.

Still, Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes.

Women must have the consent of a male guardian to enroll in college, look for a job or travel. They cannot swim in public or try on clothes when shopping.

The Saudi government also routinely arrests people without judicial review, according to Human Rights Watch. Citizens can be executed for nonviolent drug crimes, often in public. Forty-eight people were beheaded in the first four months of 2018 alone.

Saudi Arabia ranks just above North Korea on political rights, civil liberties and other measures of freedom, according to the democracy watchdog Freedom House.

But its wealth, strategic Middle East location and petroleum exports keep the Saudis as a vital U.S. ally.

American realpolitik

This kind of foreign policy – one based on practical, self-interested principles rather than moral or ideological concerns – is called “realpolitik.”

Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Nixon, was a master of realpolitik, which drove that administration to normalize its relationship with China. Diplomatic relations between the two countries had ended in 1949 when Chinese communist revolutionaries took power.

Then, as now, China was incredibly repressive. Only 17 countries – including Saudi Arabia – are less free than China, according to Freedom House.

But China is also the world’s most populous nation and a nuclear power. Nixon, a fervent anti-communist, sought to exploit a growing rift between China and the Soviet Union.

Today Washington retains the important, if occasionally rocky, relationship Kissinger forged with Beijing. President Trump may be critical of Chinese trade practices, but he is largely silent on China’s ongoing persecution of Muslim minority groups.

American realpolitik is not limited to the Mideast. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the U.S. regularly backed Latin American military dictators who tortured and killed citizens to “defend” the Americas from communism.

The U.S. supported Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup in Chile, which overthrew Socialist President Salvador Allende. Pinochet went on to murder 2,293 people and torture 30,000.AP Photo/Enrique Aracena, File)